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pretend like we headed for the hills, while in point of fact you lay in wait for them to bring the mother ship down to be obliterated, did strike me as a suicide mission.”
    “Why didn’t you say anything when we were building the refuge here?” Jake asked, exasperation plain in his voice. “You knew we built it so I could carry out my plan, while you kept the base informed from in here.”
    “I just played along. I never thought we would actually have to do this.” Adrian conceded.
    “Look, we get to stay here, Tonto, because the solid fuel stores we guard are the most valuable commodity in the quadrant. We only met on the base because I ended up in the sickbay for a wound fighting off these fuel pirates. I planned it close; because I knew when their cruiser came down to load the solid fuel, they would be scanning for heat signatures. They aimed at the moving heat signature first, babe. If not for the rock wall, you would have been afterburner dust.”
    Adrian stuck her lower lip out and lowered her head while still looking over at him.
    “Don’t pout, I hate it when you pout. I vow to never send for another old radio show or movie ever. They’ve been nothing but a bad influence on you.”
    “I was just trying to help,” Adrian whined comically.
    “Not funny, Adrian,” Jake said, fending off her attempts to grab his free hand. “You have gone too far this time, little missy. You almost got yourself blasted out of my life forever.”
    Adrian folded her arms in front of her and looked off across the room haughtily. She glanced back to see him watching her. “Oh, you just think you are so smart. Mr. Big Bad Marine takes on the space pirates with his ‘blow up their ship and catch them in the act plan’.”
    Jake shook his head in exasperation as the line between what he knew to be real started to shimmer in the haze of her movie mimic act. “Okay, I give up, Admiral Byers. Explain to me again what our real mission here on Casserine entails.”
    Adrian could not hold on to her pose. She started laughing uproariously, until the pain from her rib injury lanced into her consciousness. Dropping her empty teacup, she gripped her side over the bandage, and the color drained out of her face. Jake put down his cup and knelt again in front of her. He waited until the pain subsided before he spoke again.
    “Adrian, look at me, you little twit.”
    Adrian, her laughter silenced, looked straight into Jake’s eyes andnodded.
    “Those guys will take a few hours to swear and figure out what happened to them. The ship probably radioed the heat signatures to them before opening fire, so they know it did not dematerialize in a cloud of smoke by coincidence. We were damn lucky they didn’t figure I’d have a MAG50. If they have any strength, they’ll try and take what little revenge they can before the Force Cruiser gets here and smokes them. They have no options. We can hope for them to be so demoralized they come out with their hands up, but if that happens, I will send my trusty sidekick Tonto out to accept their surrender.”
    “What will keep them from just blowing up the storage area if they’re mad?”
    “The fact they could not get clear, and the blast would wipe out the living quarters. They would not last half a day outside.”
    “How many of them were still in the storage area?”
    “I counted fifteen.”
    “You told me you thought maybe four at most,” Adrian gasped and pointed her finger at Jake accusingly.
    Jake shrugged. “I didn’t want to worry my little sidekick.”
    “Even considering their disadvantage with gravity, they will have blasters out here.”
    “It will be a bit more difficult to take them if they resist,” admitted a now smiling Jake.
    “You egocentric worm. You self-absorbed cretin. You…you.”
    “Jarhead?”
    “Don’t you dare put words in my mouth, you Jarhead,” Adrian ranted, waving one hand in Jake’s face, while the other kept her side from moving.
    “I think you